


Whatever It Takes

by stayingwhelmed



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Brief Mentions of Blood, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Fluff, Gen, No Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Trailer Speculation, but just a little bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 07:50:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18567064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stayingwhelmed/pseuds/stayingwhelmed
Summary: A lifetime ago, she’d been the one in the streets, fighting with a feral desperation that only comes from being lost and completely alone. She’d been dripping with red in her ledger, and Clint had found her, taught her that she wasn’t just the blood on her hands.(an interpretation of Natasha and Clint’s reunion from the Endgame trailer)





	Whatever It Takes

**Author's Note:**

> sooooo I’m seeing endgame in a few days and the apprehension and excitement is killing me and I had to write a thing because all my old feelings about these two came back and aaaaahhh (so um sorry in advance for the excessive angst)

The first thing that Natasha does when the dust settles—figuratively and literally—is look for Clint. And Laura and Cooper and Lila and Nathaniel, because these are the people closest to her heart. These are the people who long ago fought their way through her masks and showed her that love is not just a child’s dream.

It only takes a few days after the snap—two days, sixteen hours, and forty-seven minutes—for Laura and the kids to show up in the international missing persons database. Natasha doesn’t want to believe it, but she _knows_ , with a combination of logic and deep-seated dread, that they’re gone. They have a protocol set in place for events like this. If Laura was safe, she would have contacted Clint and Natasha immediately. Cooper and Lila knew the drill, too. And Natasha had checked the farm herself.

She’s capable of things that even Fury would never be comfortable with, and she has a lifetime of practice controlling her fears. But that day, she opened the door, glimpsed a pile of ash, and couldn't take another step.

 

_The house is full of lively chatter and pattering feet. Natasha reclines in her favorite armchair at the Bartons’, a mug of tea in her hands, and she doesn’t stop the smile that comes to her face as Lila bounds over to show her a friendship bracelet she made with one of her classmates, as Cooper’s laugh rings out from the kitchen where he's watching the baby while his parents make dinner. Natasha sets down her tea to examine Lila’s bracelet with an eye usually reserved for weapons. She voices her enthusiastic approval as Clint steps into the living room, wiping his hands on a towel._

_Lila gives Natasha an easy hug before running over to her dad. Clint lifts her over his shoulder, steady hands as practiced with tossing his kids around as they are with stringing a bow. It's almost impossible to believe that there had been a time when Clint had driven himself into a panic about becoming a father, a time when Natasha had needed to take his face into her hands and remind him that he's so much more than the circumstances he grew up in. Lila squeals, and Clint sets her down gently, though he lets out an exaggerated_ oof _. “You’re getting heavy, munchkin,” he says, pretending to gasp for breath._

_Natasha grins as Lila swats at her dad, then runs off to the kitchen to bicker with her older brother until one of them inevitably turns to one of the adults to tattle._

_“Everything good?” Clint asks, casual, as he walks over to Natasha. His voice is light, but they both know what he’s referring to—a mission had gone south, and Natasha’s taking time off for the first time since Sokovia to come here._

_“Yeah,” Natasha murmurs, and she means it. Just being here, surrounded by the people she loves, is enough to ease the tension in her shoulders and let the masks drop away._

 

Clint’s name appears twenty-six hours and twelve minutes later. Again, logic tells her that he’s gone. Otherwise, he would have contacted her. But for some reason, Natasha can’t accept this.

A part of her that is probably more heart than head reasons that maybe Clint hasn’t reached out because he’s simply too lost in grief to do so—after all, grief changes people. For a while, even Steve shut down after watching his best friend die again. And isn’t grief making Natasha lose her own mind? She spends every spare moment scouring the news for any mention of Hawkeye on an outdated tablet, because every piece of Wakandan and Stark tech is being channeled towards more productive uses. She hasn’t slept in days. Has barely said a word, even though there’s so much to do, and Steve can’t rally everyone on his own. Her inability to move on is unacceptable. It’s not like her—she’s the pragmatic one, the one who has been trained and battered and disciplined into the person she is today. Yet somehow, Steve, the one who let the Avengers fall apart because of his loyalty towards one person who has now turned to dust, has been moving forward more effectively than Natasha.

They talked about it for a bit, if Steve murmuring empathetic reassurances and her forcing out one-word responses can be counted as a conversation. Her friend told her to take all the time she needs and said something kind about being there for her when she’s ready. Natasha had only nodded, barely there although her entire line of work has depended on her being present in the moment.

It turns out this madness isn’t for nothing, though, as one afternoon, Natasha comes across something promising. Her hopes spike upward before she can clamp them down, and she’s on her feet in an instant.

“Steve.” The name comes out breathlessly as she approaches him, and it’s not from physical exertion. Steve turns, and Natasha holds up her screen for him to see. “There are reports of a vigilante in Tokyo. Facial recognition—”

Steve raises a hand to stop her, then gives her shoulder a light squeeze. “Go.” His smile is sad and small, but it’s genuine. And these days, those are damn near impossible to come by.

Natasha nods. “I’ll bring him home.” Then she’s off, instructing FRIDAY to prepare a jet for her as she goes.

It’s an agonizing ten hour flight to Japan, and it takes all of her willpower and constant rationalization to hold herself together. Facial recognition isn’t perfect, and she can’t pin all of her hopes on low-tech security footage. Even if it _is_ Clint, he’s likely to be too far gone for this to be an easy reunion. She might need to get ready for a fight; she might need to steel herself as she did all those years ago—Barton might be compromised again. So she keeps her head steady, but her heart still hammers in her chest.

 

_It had been a routine retrieval op in Yekaterinburg—nothing they hadn’t seen before. It would have been completed without a hitch, but Natasha came across an old face from her past, and a covert mission became a bloody and vicious battle in seconds. She and Clint neutralized the threat and got the intel they came for, and neither of them sustained any injuries they couldn’t deal with on their own. That would be the end of it in their report to Coulson._

_Now, they’re laying side by side in a SHIELD-issued hotel bed. They’ve already swept the room for bugs, repositioned the bed so that they have a clear view of all exits, and both of them have an arsenal within their reach. Still, Natasha stares at the nondescript ceiling, unwilling to let her eyes shut. Unwilling, because she knows what images will rise when the darkness falls._

_Judging by Clint’s breathing, he isn’t asleep, either. So it doesn’t surprise her when he speaks up._

_“Do you wanna see what shitty movies they have here?”_

_Natasha’s lips quirk into something resembling a smile. “Absolutely.”_

 

It’s nighttime when she lands, and rain falls heavily from the sky. She breaks out an umbrella instead of a uniform. There’s no need to cause panic, and… and if she’s being honest with herself, if Clint really is here, she doesn’t want to meet him as the Black Widow. Showing him Natasha is what will bring him back.

With her skills and resources, it doesn’t take long to track down the rumored vigilante in a dark corner of the city, illuminated only by neon signs from rundown shops. The unmistakable clang of metal against metal echoes through the street, and for a moment, Natasha is frozen, only able to watch. The vigilante is clad in black, a whirlwind of motion in the shadows. His assailant is a middle-aged man in a business suit, and Natasha barely spares him a glance. Facial recognition can be faulty, yes, but she knows Clint’s movements better than she knows her own, and she can recognize his fighting style anywhere, no matter how much it has changed. And fuck, it’s changed—every slash of his weapon, every swift strike and smooth line of his body is contorted in pain that screams out to her.

A lifetime ago, she’d been the one in the streets, fighting with a feral desperation that only comes from being lost and completely alone. She’d been dripping with red in her ledger, and Clint had found her, taught her that she wasn’t just the blood on her hands.

 

_“You should have killed me.” Natalia hasn’t had to speak English in years, and the words come out accented, clipped._

_They’re sitting in an alleyway, rain pouring from above, both of them breathing hard and ignoring wounds from a fight that neither of them should have come out of alive._

_She’s known that this man—Clint Barton—has been tracking her for months, under the orders of an American-based organization called SHIELD. She’s outrun them until now, but even weapons have to reload, and Natalia found herself out of time and energy and resources when the man had finally caught up to her._

_Now, he lets out a panting chuckle that nearly makes her flinch. “Yeah, probably.” He glances sideways at her where she’s sitting a careful five feet away, arms curled around her legs—a position of vulnerability that she shouldn't be in, but she can't bring herself to care. “And you could have killed me, but you didn’t.”_

_And it’s true. And she should have. But as she’d pressed his own knife to his throat, she’d caught a real glimpse of his face. He was young. Perhaps barely an adult. And inexplicably, the life had drained out of her. This man was by no means innocent; this man would kill her as soon as she let down her guard. But he was barely a man, and she was barely a person, and she was tired of living a life running from her handlers and SHIELD and countless other organizations that wanted her dead. So Natalia Alianovna Romanova, the Black Widow, star pupil of the Red Room, gave up._

_She keeps her face blank as she catches her breath, resisting the urge to curl into a tighter ball and close her eyes. “Interrogation, then.” That has to be the only reason why he hadn’t pulled the trigger. But then why are they just sitting here? Nothing adds up, and Natalia’s brain is calculating at an unacceptably sluggish rate. It’s almost like an act of kindness, and perhaps this young man really is naive enough to give it to her. But then again, she isn’t running away, either._

_“You mean torture. We don’t do that,” the young man says. He rubs a hand across his face, wiping the rain out of his eyes. She continues watching him, wary, and when he looks over at her again, their eyes meet for a moment. “Look, I’ve… I’ve read your file. I know you broke your conditioning. I know that you haven’t killed anyone you haven’t had to since you escaped.” He tilts his head back, knocking it against the wall behind him. “Fuck, Fury’s gonna kill me,” he mutters._

_But then he looks back to her, and Natalia narrows her eyes at the intensity of his gaze. “How would you like a chance to start over?”_

 

Clint’s opponent drops to the ground with a squelch, and he drags his weapon across his arm, staining his sleeve red with the blood on his blade.

Natasha blinks, hard, against memories of horror turning into trust, of soft grins and wicked smirks and murmured reassurances after nightmares and easy banter under gunfire. A wall she hadn’t even realized she’d built up over the past few days begins to crumble, until her eyes are stinging and her breath is hitching in her throat. This is her partner, her best friend, the first person who showed her that she could find her own family. “Clint.”

His shoulders tense almost imperceptibly, but nothing about his body is ever imperceptible to her. The hood is lowered, a mask ripped off. Water streaks down his hair and into his face like sweat, like tears, as he turns around.

His gaze is miles away, but now that she’s here, and _he’s_ here, she can be patient, and she’ll stand here in the rain for as long as it takes. And slowly, he begins to focus on her, those blank, haunted eyes filled with grief, but brimming with recognition, too.

“Nat?”

His voice is hoarse, and seems to push past gravel on its way out. She swallows a lump in her own throat. The blade clatters to the ground. Natasha spares a quick glance to be sure that it’s out of Clint’s victim’s reach, but she needn’t have worried, and when she looks back up, her best friend is right before her, stepping under the shelter of her umbrella.

Their eyes meet, searching each other, hungry, desperate, and Natasha knows that Clint is reading her every thought just as she is reading his. It took years of pain and patience, but she opened herself up to another person, and now they know each other better than they know themselves. There’s nothing that needs to be said, not now, not here.

Natasha extends a hand, and Clint takes it, his fingers curling around hers in a gesture so familiar that her chest aches. She squeezes, gentle. He squeezes back. And together, they turn away from the path of destruction Clint left in his wake. It’s time to avenge the rest of their family.

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first time writing these characters, so hopefully I didn't butcher them completely—any feedback is greatly appreciated! and good luck to all of us after this weekend because I have a pretty good feeling we’ll be dead


End file.
